• A CORRECTION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SLE,—The brief mention of "The Battle of Maldon, and other Renderings from the Anglo-Saxon, together with Original Verse," in the Spectator of the 18th ult., has recently come to my notice, and I hasten to throw what light I can on the points mentioned by your critic. To begin with, you must have wondered, like myself, at the strange word " Panitation" included in the quotation from the sonnet on Wagner. This, I need hardly point out, was an error in printing, which, however, unfortunately deprived the passage of its essential meaning. The right word is " Parsifalian." Coming to your critic's question whether one counts syllables in writing stressed verse, I may say that one certainly does not, since it is this very point that marks the difference from syllabic verse. Quite apart from Coleridge, whose glorious footsteps it were vain to wish to tread, I have tried in a small way to apply with greater strictness a metrical principle, which, if often ignored, is as old as the language, and in so doing I have generally sought to avoid those conventional stresses (unbacked by rhyme) which Mr. Bridges considers to mar so perfect a poem as " Christabel,"—at least from the point of view of stress.—I am, Sir, &c., F. W. L. BUTTERFIELD.
Grand Mel du Lac, Vevey, Switzerland, September 17th.
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